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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

SUSE Linux 10.0 includes a comprehensive selection of applications to facilitate a wide variety of computing tasks (office suite, e-mail, Internet, picture processing, multimedia and more), plus a subset of packages for advanced users, including key networking and development packages such as Samba, Apache Web server, KDevelop, Mono and more. SUSE Linux is available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions and provides more than 4,000 of the latest open source software packages.

i wont complain to much but suse`s use of non-standard config file and broken software is a pain. for instance there version of HTTPD, or as they call it apache2 has a annoying config file that is multi-files and links, and the directories fly all across the system.

I do like this .It almost installed itself.It even recognized my new RAZER COPPERHEAD mouse w/o my driver disk.It updates easily and dual boots no problem.It could not see my NETGEAR usb wi-fi adaptor.There are some issues with multimedia, but a lot of that is my not knowing wtf i am doing,yet(with linux).Still more fun than windows ,which Istill use -but not as often.BTW i downloaded mine for free,ever so nice;linux roxx!!

I installed this from a magazine cover disk out of interest, and then didn't use it for a long time as I couldn't get my winmodem to work with it. After going broadband, and after YaST on my 9.1 install stopped working, I decided to give it another go, and it's very good.

It's noticeably faster than 9.1, and while some software is missing (installed the "open" version), what's there is still impressive (OpenOffice.org 2.0 is definitely an improvement). Still undecided about Gnome (which I installed instead of KDE), but it's good enough. Beagle is quite impressive - searched for a name "Anywhere", and within about 1 second it had found two WP documents and a web page I looked at earlier today.

The only continuing annoyance is that the display is slightly unstable - it "flashes" every now and again (e.g. when opening a program or web page) and there is slight interference when watching vido, but this is a minor concern.

Just finished installing on my son's notebook; all the hardware including wifi worked flawlessly out of the box.

A nice first impression upon initial install, with sexy default theme and wallpaper. YaST is one of the best control interfaces out there. Dual-boot with M$ was never easier on any distro I've seen; I have an NTFS with WinXP and FAT32 with data, and it auto-mounted them both with user read/write permissions as /windows/C and /windows/D. That's the most n00b-friendly setup I can think of, as most n00bs are going to want to hang on to their Windows for a while, and will appreciate the easy-to-understand mount points.

I personally do not like suse as a server, I would recomend Debian for servers

Incredibly easy to install. The installation easily resized my windwos partition and created a linux partition and a swap partition. I changed the file system from Reizer FS to ext3. I uses YAST to install the ndiswrapper, and followed the tutorial for Suse to setup the ndiswrapper modprobe on boot. YAST also now natively supports configuration for WPA-PSK for my wireless card, so I no longer need to create shell scripts to bring the wireless up and down. I can input my ssid and my keyphrase. You can also configure user control on the network interfaces. This is great, it allows my wife to be able to use the wireless and wired ethernet without the need to understand linux or have root access. She can simply click the connect in the system tray in KDE.

Would you recommend the product? no | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 9

Pros:

Cons:

Won't install on my pc - locks up

I'm sure I'd like this distro if I could get it to install on my pc. The last version that installed was 8.2. Since then, the install locks up my pc quite early in the process. I suspect it has something to do with SATA support. I have an ASUS A7N8X Deluxe mobo that has a Silicon Image 3112A SATA controller. Perhaps I'll try again when SUSE 11.0 comes out. I had a similar experience with Fedora Core 3 working OK, but FC4 fails to install. Meanwhile, Ubuntu 5.10 installed flawlessly and is working just fine.

I Instaled suse 10 a few months ago, after using fedora 4. I must say right from the start i noticed many pros over fedora...i dont mean to put fedora down...its great..just not for me. Only Issue i came across with suse is when i use WINE (which btw comes bundled with suse10) i use a chat program called Yahelite via Wine..and this seems to slow my computer down (1024ram,P4 2.5ghz, .5TB HD bus speed -2500)and when i minimize yahelite..i cant reopen it..im not sure why this happens..I like yast2..i had no problems instaling rpm's..mostly media stuff such as VLC and Mplayer

I Instaled suse 10 a few months ago, after using fedora 4. I must say right from the start i noticed many pros over fedora...i dont mean to put fedora down...its great..just not for me. Only Issue i came across with suse is when i use WINE (which btw comes bundled with suse10) i use a chat program called Yahelite via Wine..and this seems to slow my computer down (1024ram,P4 2.5ghz, .5TB HD bus speed -2500)and when i minimize yahelite..i cant reopen it..im not sure why this happens..I like yast2..i had no problems instaling rpm's..mostly media stuff such as VLC and Mplayer

I installed Suse 10 Pro, and everything was great, but the Sound card did not work. I went to www.opensuse.org and read thru everything, and finally found that you need to install the ALSA drivers for the sound card. I worked on that for about three days, trying to compile the drivers, and then finding that I needed a C Compiler installed. Then finally got the drivers installed, and NO SOUND!... I FINALL found, buried deep in the installed KDE Help files, that you need to check ALL of the installed Mixers. And sure enough, the QAMixer was MUTED!!!! (Sounds of muffled screams!!) And then there was sound!

The plus of it all, is that I really learned a lot about Suse Linux.... I would recommend this distro to anyone. I am a Newbie to Suse, but a long time UNIX user and Tech Support.

SuSE has always been the distribution that has "just worked" on my hardware. The last two releases have been pretty good, but 10.0 is much better. It starts out with the best graphical installer I've ever seen. It lets you tweak and adjust lots of parameters before you ever commit anything to disk. The install is pretty big- over 2GB for the default install- but it installs in about 20 to 40 minutes, depending on the speed of the hardware. That is about half the time it took to install 9.2 or 9.3.

Once you have it up and going, SuSE is an excellent OS. There are many repositories to add to YaST so that you can have up-to-date packages, and they are generally very stable. The YaST software installation module is effective but somewhat slow to load. You also can't install packages from a command line yet (coming in 10.1), so it is not quite as good as Synaptic and apt-get. However, there is a *bunch* of software on the install media (esp. the 7.6GB dual-layer DVD), so if you are on dial-up, here's your distribution as you don't have to download every new application.

The configuration tools in YaST are first-rate, and Novell fixed some bugs in OpenOffice, particularly the one that didn't let Ctrl-Shift-B make subscript text. Other programs work equally well. The OS boots quickly and is almost unkillable once it is running. The SuSE devs sure did their homework and sweat the details and it shows. I recommend this distribution to anyone with hardware that's less that 7 or 8 years old. You will not be disappointed.

Installation is the best & most intuitive I have seen, period. A non-techie could do it easily.

Boot loader is very pretty and professional looking.

Gnome performance was fantastic compared to Ubuntu 6.04 (may be due to fact that Ubuntu loads crap video driver whereas SUSE has full support for gfx drivers).

The distro is LSB certified. Dunno how this works, but if their commercial version gets ISV certifications, do these eventually trickle down into the opensuse product?? Great if they do.

File system looks to have been well thought out (im not an expert) and permissions set quite well - looks like the've locked things down quite well.

Novell is a professional company well known for it's once superb Netware product - I have high hopes that Novell will do for SUSE what it did with Netware.

SUSE 10.0 release had more up-to-date versions of packages like firefox and OOo than Ubuntu 5.10 had, and Ubuntu is supposedly Debian SID with bleeding edge software. This is a plus for the SUSE team and minus for Ubuntu.

SUSE has not maimed root by using sudo like Ubuntu has, which is of dubious use on a single user PC anyway.

X86_64 version of SUSE has many more packages than the i386 version - good sign, and there seem to be a good number of packages available.

Cons

It's got a commercial license that you have to agree to when you install. Major bad point for Novell. What happened to it being OpenSuse?? Why the license?? Can they even do that when many other packages are under GPL? If you've moved away from Windows due to the Evil MS empire being closed source, then SUSE does not really help Linux' cause by becoming as commercial. Better to stick to a debian distro if you're into free software.

Yast seems ok, but it's not a patch on the *concept* (not neccessarily the actual interface) of 'apt-get' and repositories. There is no official repository for SUSE other than the initial install repository for that release - i.e. it's not a living breathing constantly-updated repository. This means that either you have to find RPMs on unofficial sites, or find the software yourself. This is a real shame and really lets SUSE down (apart from commercial license for their so called open product). With apt-get you can upgrade to a new release without having to download a CD and run an upgrade routine. To do it from within apt-get is fantastic. Not that apt-get is without fault (no current versions of packages in official repositories) but it's a damn sight better than what I've heard called 'RPM-hell'.

Other than that, they have limited selection of filesystems--no JFS, and default to ReiserFS is a bit optimistic I think. Would be nice if they specified if XFS (looks like the best FS out there at the moment) is read-only or not, as it is read-only in Ubuntu (they do not say either), and it's not fun to choose it, get halfway through the install only to find out that packages cannot be written to the new FS.

I wish I could have found more reviews that were written by Linux experts instead of apparent newcomers to Linux. I am a complete Linux newbie, but I suppose I am a Windows power user, and I want to know the nitty gritty of choosing a distro, but many comments here simply state that 'the installer is great!' or 'It looks great!'. That may be the case, but they are quite minor points. Function and performance, package management and hardware support, industry certifications and system manageability are much more important factors.

SUSE 10.0 is the third version of SUSE I've used. It's the best and easiest Linux distro I've found...period! I'm not highly experienced in Linux, yet with SUSE, everything works. I've had no issues with hardware and SUSE is the ONLY distro I've found where I am able to easily set up my SATA RAID0 array and just have it work. Absolutely every piece of hardware on three Linux boxes works plus a HP notebook running wireless.

Once you look up and add a good group of repository sources, all multimedia works perfectly, as well. And, you have virtually every application you could ever want.

It's got lots of packages. Well, it seems like alot unless you're a Debian user. It does seem a bit bloated for an rpm type OS.

Install was fine. No major problems. Using YaST is nice. Doesn't always work, but usually does. It's nice to have a graphical interface for configuration and software management.

I didn't install everything, yet of the 1G of RAM I have, SuSE 10 uses half of it! What the hell is up with that? It's not like I have one package eating it all up, either. This is a MAJOR drawback, and no, I shouldn't have to tweak the thing to keep it from using half my RAM by just sitting there. This is the big reason I can't give it a higher rating.

However, if you have the RAM to spare and you're just coming from Windows World, this is your OS. Visually, there's not much difference and if you know where the Windows tools are, you'll easilly find the SuSE ones. SuSE seems to be the best transition OS I've found. Personally, I like 9.1 the best because it doesn't hog RAM, but SuSE 10 is pretty nice anyway.

Multi Media support doesn't come 'out of the box' here. I haven't used a linux yet where it does. I think it's licensing issues. On this release, you'll have to work with multi media to get it going. It can be a pain because of prerequisite packages.

as far as i am concerned Novell has done a great job making linux easier to use with suse. YAST has made installing packages really easy and even a newbie like me feels more comfortable in linux than in windows. With SUSE 10 i am a permanent linux user now.

I just installed SUSE 10.0 Linux a few days ago and when first booted, I was surprised because it looks good and it's very feature-packed. I'm using it as my primary Operating System now. I also installed the Chinese Input SCIM and it works perfectly. Loving it. Recommend to everyone.

I finally had to leave mandriva 2006.0 for my laptop. Mandriva kept crashing on the laptop [I still use it on the server for NOW]

AS for Suse 10, when I installed it, it found all of my hardward and I was back up and running at work the very next day. IT took me a while to remember how to make the KDE focus policy resonable but other than that I had a great time getting it up and running.

IT is very consistent. After updating the system with udates from Novell, my machine continued to run. My firware HD was still useable, my jump drive still worked, my scanner worked. These might seem like simple things but my last distro, EVERYTHING stopped being reconiged after an update. I had to reboot just to get ANYTHING to work. I am so happy I am now able to use my laptop like a normal user. :)

I must admit...the claim that the distros use NOT to add support for multimedia stuff out of the box is outragious....but it was not much of a problem setting it up because I had to do that same thing for other distos.

I installed SUSE 10, it is simple and easy to use. But, it crashed multiple times, a lot of bugs related to multimedia occur. I think it is suitable for newbie but not for a professional, I think debian-based distos are better.

It assumes that you want Grub installed in the master boot record and does not inform you that it is doing so.

The Adventures of Suse 10.0 on a Dell 8400
Let me start at the beginning; I am the proud owner of a Dell 8400, 3.0 GB Pentium 4 w/ 1GB RAM, 160GB hard drive, DVD ROM and DVD RW/CD RW. I had been running Windows XP and Mandriva 2005. I even had an Intel 537ep modem up and running thanks to the information at Linux Question.org. I was using the Dual Boot procedure outlined in http://wiki.LinuxQuestions.org/wiki/Dual_booting. I had read many good reviews about Suse and based on those favorable reviews I decided to try it out. My intent was to install Mandriva 2006 get it running and then install Suse 10.0 as a trial. Well my Mandriva DVD did not work and so I decided to install Suse 10.0 first and then after Mandriva 2006 arrived remove Suse and install Mandriva in its partitions. The recommended partition sizes were different from Mandriva but I made the necessary adjustments. I used Partition Magic 7.0 to delete Mandriva 2005 partitions, resize a NTFS and FAT32 partitions. That work complete I began the installation of Suse 10.0.
My first hint that things would not go smoothly was when I was told I had a 64 bit computer. But hey, I am no computer geek and I would not know 64 bits if it kissed me. I disregarded the installation program recommendations partitions and modified their recommendation to fit my partitions as follows; swap=1GB, /=500MB, /boot=100MB, /home=7GB, /opt=4GB, /tmp=150MB, /usr=4GB, and /var=1GB. So far an excellent installation program.
My second hint of trouble was when the installation program told me it was rebooting in 10 seconds. The reboot was normal and the installation went smoothly it detected my printer, my Intel modem and my Ethernet card. Oh boy I thought Suse is great they have a package that will allow me to use my Intel modem. Then I remembered that version 9.3 had a Intel 536 modem driver. Oh happy days. The installation package allowed me to set up Dual Booting with Windows XP and Suse 10.0. Boy this is better than Mandriva any day. Installation complete I rebooted and wait with joy for Suse to boot. Surprise one Grub installed on mbr and I did not want that because at best Suse was a temporary installation. Tried to have grub installed on root but met with continued failure. You can set it where you want it to be but you had no assurance that what you wanted got done. So I deleted Suse and tried to use the fixmbr feature on Windows XP CD. It said it worked but the boot process hung so I reinstalled Suse and this time monitored the expert side of the installation. There I discovered that the default was to install Grub in the MBR, and provide minimal installation of available features. This time I set Suse up to boot from a floppy and did a full installation of KDE and Gnome. Now I am ready to get on the Internet to catch up on a week of mail news and instant messages. KPPP has permission problems???? Suse has another Internet package good ol Suse helping a brother out (WVDial). This WVDial can't find my modem. Did a search for Intel 537ep and it was not found. Suse found my modem but had no package for it. Got my external modem from another computer. Now on the Internet with 185mb of updates, what the heck I have a dial up and I will let it run all night and most of the day. Next day downloads complete system is up to date. Time to shut down and rest a little while. What this note about renaming or modifying some scripts went by to fast to read. Rebooted and I get “kernel panic” what the????” What do I do now ? I don't know what is going on or what to do except re-install Suse 10.0 again and don't do the updates. Why have updates modify your scripts and rename them. This doesn't make any sense to me. Well I eventually got Suse installed and running with the external modem and I like it. I never figured out how to download and install additional programs but using the console I did install Suse versions of Gyach and AMSN which seem more robust under Suse than they were under Mandriva. I finally got Mandriva 2006 and installed it and now I plan to try Suse 10.1 using the lessons learned. Mandriva will always be the work horse Linux operating system because I have more experience with that system. But I want to be fair to Suse. maybe we just had a bad hair week or two.

I started Suse since 9.0 and now my daily Suse is 10.0.
No difficulties in installation and it boots faster than 9.3 or 9.2. All my hardware work well except my smartlink softmodem. I haven't been able to figure it out to work.
At first I was disappointed because I can't play my MP3 files using the multimedia software but after I searched for solution it worked. Sharing files and printers is easy. To browse your local network is easy to. You just have to turn off the firewall. I even use my computer to be the Apache Web Server in my Local Network.
My next problem is Xine but now it is solved.. And the last problem I found the solution is Audacity and after that I decided to use Suse 10.0 almost all the time except when I connect to the internet. I still use Suse 9.2 because my modem works there.

Well, here's the deal. I have just finished tinkering with 10.0 on a computer at the office, and several things happened:

For starters, I cannot print. I have an odd setup anyway, but this is what Novell is good for. What I have is a network print server on a 3-in-1 fax machine that has an IP address. The model was recent, so it was not included in the list (It's a Brother HL8220 series). There's also a Minolta Color Network Printer that is not supported. I <i>can</i> do however, is share files with the other machines, however, due to the authentication Samba requires, some of my folders are not accessible(Have to figure out where the user permission settings are).

As for wireless, that didn't work either. I tried it at home with a netgear WG311 card. Had to get ndiswrapper, to no avail. Even 10.1 couldn't do the job....

On to multimedia... you can stream some video (UEFA.com) but not others (CNet.com) If the website has some flash on it, you can see it, but if the entire site is built on it, you can't (nikesoccer.com). If you downloaded MPEGS, you can't see them, or WMVs, or anything for that matter. When you open them in Realplayer, you'll get an error saying the plug-in is not installed. I tried to look for the plug-ins, but after 5mins... it wasn't worth it. Big minus for a major distro.

I use KDE, and it isn't too bad. The animations are slick and smooth, along with the default theme. The system took longer to start than previous versions, regardless of the hardware I used (Office PC: P3, Home: Intel Celeron). As for configuration, you can't beat YaST (I can still can hand-edit, but I'm looking at it from a novice user perspective: the longer it takes for me to get something to work, I consider it broken) Nvidia drivers are no longer available out of the box. Another dent in Novell's armor. Had to spend time getting that up and running...

Well, at this point this is what I can conclude: If you are dealing with a name brand machine - HP, Gateway, Dell, Alienware, Falcon - chances are your hardware will be supported, and it would just be a matter of hard disk management. If your dealing with a custom box - AMD/Intel, Alienware, Cyberpower - you will know what your chances are before even putting the CD/DVD in the drive. I'd still recommend it to everyone, because the programs it comes with are well worth the hassle. None come close.

I can't believe you Linux disciples. In the last week I've tried four different distributions and can't buy into any of them. Ubuntu - looked and felt great from the live cd but couldn't get it to boot after install to hard disk -used 3 different install disks too. Kept getting GRUB errors - total waste of time. Vector Linux - detected my DLINK router ok and booted from HD ok but didn't look that good and felt quite geeky. Next tried Mandrake. Not keen anything using more than 1 cd - XP uses only one cd and so does ubuntu which looked and felt better. Connected to internet in fairness. Again, though, it just didn't feel nice to use.
Onto Suse 10.1 - 5 cds !!! or 1 DVD - took nearly 2 hours to install! No matter what I tried it wouldn't even see my router let alone connect to internet. Very sluggish compared with XP. Also how is a newbie supposed to know what YAST means or does? Nerdy, esoteric interface designers strike again. Didn't give me an option to partition disk during install. Again, file management is stupid. Its like taking all the directories out of the windows directory and putting them in the root. Why not just have a Suse directory with all the OS stuff neatly tucked away a la windows.
LINUX? BOLLUX!!!

I've tried several linux distros and it's the retail version of Suse 10.0 that I keep going back to. 10.0 just plane works. It dose everything I need to do without hesitation. Once I got away from Gnome and switched to KDE, it detects everything and leaves nothing to try to figure out. I'm new to linux, and had I not tried Suse 10.0/KDE .... I would have gone back to wenderz. I tried the retail version of 10.1 but it was too complected for someone with my skill level to get working. In my opinion: the retail version of Suse 10.0 witch comes with a manual, is probably about the best choice for the linux begginer.

I like SUSE 10.0 its the Linux i have enjoyed so far with its ease to use interfaces and configurations. I easily use it on my desktop and laptop Toshiba L10. Though i had to download and install some applications and codecs for music and video playback its the best in my opinion i would recommend it both for newbies and gurus.

Would you recommend the product? no | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 4

Pros:

long history suggests they should have it right

Cons:

they don't have it right - Msoft-like release strategy

I've been a zealous supporter of SUSE for many years, moving from one release to the next with the ever more desperate hope that each one would finally cover the ground left lacking in previous releases. I'd come to believe that no linux release could possibly recognize all of the complex possibilities in any laptop (my particular applications). I never experienced a SUSE release that did not require extensive tweaking, patching, and researching to activate basic hardware functionality: audio, graphics cards, networking, printing., etc. On one occasion, YAST upgraded the kernel and rendered my laptop completely non functional. The latest frustration was to ungrade a simple IRC chat client. Since SUSE seems to like it's own unique locations for files (e.g. "gnome" is a folder containing many graphics apps) many graphics based source installs are problematic. As I'd grown used to finding, this application upgrade attempt required upgrading multiple supporting packages (e.g. GTK2 and five others). Even after a day of building and installing from source, the upgrade still failed. Not only that, but because of the unique file locations of SUSE, the source builds created problems with old programs (browser, Gaim, Office). In exasperation I backed up all of my user files on an external drive and tried Ubuntu.

Not only did everything work (auto installed all hardware, networking, Inet access, printing) but the application packages are kept within one or two releases of current! Copying the "hidden" files for my users back to the respective folders restored all my data and configurations (bookmarks, emails, data files, etc). I was fully opeational (which I'd never been with SUSE) in a half day ! I'm amazed and a bit angry with myself for supporting SUSE through all these distributions. In retrospect, the appearance is that SUSE picks a set of application program releases and supports only those for anybparticular SUSE version release (e.g. later versions of GTK2 are available only for later versions of SUSE). I should have seen it before: it's the Microsoft way! If you want to upgrade "to the latest application package" you have to buy a new version of the SUSE package. Just like Msoft, SUSE wants us to believe that applications and systems are inseparable.

My recommendation: skip SuSE and go directly to Ubuntu. As a significant bonus, the update and program add/remove function is light years ahead of YAST (much faster, more accessible, links to current upgrades).

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me 5 times, I used to be a SUSE user." (hmm - It's worth noting that both addicts and computer fans are called 'users')